Platform Security
GlobeNewswire | September 29, 2023
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today announced it has formed the Veterans Program Advisory Council, made up of a global board of esteemed members from organizations that support the military veterans community across the Five Eyes countries: United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. Members will provide counsel on how Fortinet can continue meeting the needs of military veterans looking to transition into the cybersecurity field.
Military veterans have many complementary skillsets that make them ideal candidates for cybersecurity roles, including discipline, problem-solving under immense pressure, situational awareness, and an understanding of the importance of maintaining a strong defense posture. With the industry facing a talent shortage with an estimated 3.4 million security roles needing to be filled worldwide, the veteran community can play a key role in filling critical cyber roles with access to training, mentorship, and employment opportunities.
Yet, the Fortinet 2023 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Global Research Report found that 43% of organizations indicated difficulty in recruiting qualified veterans for cybersecurity roles. At the same time, veteran turnover is high in the industry, with one key reason being the shortage of staff, leading to overwork and burnout.
To further address these hurdles veterans face, the esteemed members of the Veterans Program Advisory Council with extensive backgrounds working with the military veteran community and as veterans themselves will help Fortinet strengthen its Veterans Program offerings by providing guidance on how to continue reskilling and upskilling veterans so they can start and stay in various cyber career pathways.
Veterans Program Advisory Council members (listed in alphabetical order) include:
Chris Barlow, Managing Director at Cerco IT Ltd (U.K.)
Marty Donoghue, Chief Executive of the RNZRSA (New Zealand)
Colin Grimes, Training Coordinator of TechVets Programme, The Forces Employment Charity (U.K.)
Tom Marsland, Board Chairman and CEO at VetSec, Inc. (U.S.)
Heath Moodie, Director of Vets in Cyber (Australia)
James Murphy, Director of TechVets Programme, The Forces Employment Charity (U.K.)
Bryan Radliff, CyberVets Program Manager at Onward to Opportunity, D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families (U.S.)
Patrick Shaw, Founder of Cyber Catalyst (Canada)
Mark Wilcox, Head of Cyber Training, Permanent Opportunities and Partnership at Cerco IT Ltd (U.K.)
Fortinet’s Commitment to Supporting Veterans to Close the Cyber Skills Gap
The Veterans Program Advisory Council will help build on the Veterans Program's success in providing more cybersecurity training pathways for military veterans with both existing technical background or no IT experience. Fortinet provides Veterans Program members access to its Network Security Experts (NSE) Certification Program curriculum to help them transition into the cybersecurity field and advance in their security careers through access to cyber training, professional development resources, and employment opportunities. This year, the Veterans Program is celebrating five years of helping military service members, veterans, and military spouses receive the fundamental resources they need to transition into cyber roles.
Fortinet has also been recognized as a 2023 VETS Indexes Recognized Employer, further underscoring the company’s commitment to supporting the veteran community throughout their careers.
Veterans Program Advisory Council Members Biographies
Chris Barlow, Managing Director at Cerco IT Ltd (U.K.)
Chris Barlow joined Cerco in 2003, and has since established a recruitment division for graduates through Cerco Training, a large proportion of which were British forces veterans. Chris acquired the entire business in 2017, and the company has continued to grow, prosper, and develop further. The vision for Cerco is to become a market leader in taking novice talent and guiding them to the highest levels of IT support and cybersecurity. Chris has made employment connections for new engineers with global IT companies such as Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.
Marty Donoghue, Chief Executive of the RNZRSA (New Zealand)
Marty Donoghue has been chief executive of the RNZRSA since October 2020. Marty has a 35-year track record of transformational leadership, successfully building and managing teams and mobilizing volunteers in New Zealand and internationally across defense, sport, science, and in the not-for-profit sector. Marty served in the New Zealand Army for 25 years and is a veteran of Bosnia, Angola, Bougainville, and Iraq.
Colin Grimes, Training Coordinator of TechVets Programme, The Forces Employment Charity (U.K.)
Colin Grimes joined TechVets from the education sphere, where he worked as a primary school teacher with particular responsibility for computing across the curriculum. During his time in education, he also worked as a consultant to schools for the National Centre of Computing Education, delivering training to schools in computing and remote learning, leaning on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before this, he enjoyed a 24-year career as an air battle management specialist in the Royal Air Force. He also served as an instructor within the U.K. School of Air Battle Management, where he was responsible for training the next generation of air surveillance specialists.
Tom Marsland, Board Chairman and CEO at VetSec, Inc (U.S.)
Tom Marsland is a cybersecurity professional with over 21 years of experience in the information technology and nuclear power industry. He has also served over 21 years in the U.S. Navy and has a BS in IT security and an MS in cybersecurity. He is the board chairman of VetSec and the VP of technology and technical services at Cloud Range.
Heath Moodie, Director of Vets in Cyber (Australia)
Heath is the director of Vets in Cyber, where he is helping to build a mentoring program, running community events, and partnering with industry-leading training providers to offer employment assistance to veterans. As a five-year Australian Army infantry veteran, Heath transitioned into cybersecurity and was immediately confronted with the different cultures between the military community and civilian life. Wanting to be the change that he needed, Heath created a grassroots organization, Vets in Cyber, which is focused on helping to build a community around veterans to offer them the support they need within the cybersecurity industry.
James Murphy, Director of TechVets Programme, The Forces Employment Charity (U.K.)
James Murphy joined TechVets from Government Digital Services in the Cabinet Office, where he was employed as the head of threat intelligence, providing strategic cyber threat intelligence advice to key decision makers within central government with specific focus on protecting national infrastructure. Prior to this, James served for 19 years in the British military, deploying to Northern Ireland, East Africa, and Afghanistan with the infantry, receiving lifelong injuries as a result of enemy action. James then served the remainder of his service in intelligence, developing the army’s exploitation capability, providing support to U.K. Defence Engagement in East Asia before delivering strategic support to global joint military operations.
Bryan Radliff, CyberVets Program Manager at Onward to Opportunity (O2O) (U.S.)
Bryan Radliff serves as the CyberVets program manager in the Onward to Opportunity Program for the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University. CyberVets is a skills-to-job pathway that aims to fast-track veterans into high-demand cyber careers by providing no-cost employment training, industry certifications, and career services to transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses. Bryan is a 31-year veteran of the U.S. Army, serving as an enlisted medical supply specialist, infantryman, and an armor/cavalry officer before retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
Patrick Shaw, Founder of Cyber Catalyst and Tech Vets (Canada)
Founder of Cyber Catalyst and co-founder of Coding For Veterans (CFV), Pat initiated Cyber Catalyst Talent Solutions to assist veterans achieve meaningful and rewarding careers using the skills developed through their upskilling or reskilling studies. Pat curated the CFV secure software development and the cybersecurity curriculum and established the learning approach aligning widely recognized industry certification exams to meet the cyber talent needs of employers. Cyber Catalyst Talent Solutions offers job-focused microcredentialing and certifications in support of job placement. Tech Vets Canada engages veterans and military family members with career mentorship and learning support.
Mark Wilcox, Cyber Training, Opportunities and Partnership at Cerco IT Ltd (U.K.)
Mark has over 30 years of commercial software development experience, the majority of which has involved web technologies. Throughout his career, Mark has developed and supported complex systems for a range of clients, including the London Stock Exchange, Lloyds Bank, Ryman stationers, Debenhams, and Woolworths. In January 2022, Mark joined Cerco IT to head up the cybersecurity training and employment division. As a key architect of Cerco's Cradle to Cyber training program, an initiative to provide advanced network security skills to Cerco’s trained graduates (many of whom are ex-armed forces), Mark continues to forge relationships with internationally renowned tech and training partners, such as Fortinet and CompTIA.
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) is a driving force in the evolution of cybersecurity and the convergence of networking and security. Our mission is to secure people, devices, and data everywhere, and today we deliver cybersecurity everywhere you need it with the largest integrated portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products. Well over half a million customers trust Fortinet's solutions, which are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry. The Fortinet Training Institute, one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry, is dedicated to making cybersecurity training and new career opportunities available to everyone. FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s elite threat intelligence and research organization, develops and utilizes leading-edge machine learning and AI technologies to provide customers with timely and consistently top-rated protection and actionable threat intelligence. Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, and FortiGuard Labs.
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Software Security
Business Wire | November 03, 2023
Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC) today announced new, purpose-built Zero Trust security capabilities, which provide a solution to answer the Zero Trust pillars addressing data, identity, devices, networks, applications and workloads.
The new Zero Trust security capabilities have been tested and validated on an AWS Snowball Edge and AWS Snow Family device with on-board storage and compute power for select Amazon Web Services (AWS) capabilities. AWS Snowball Edge can support local processing and edge-computing workloads in addition to transferring data between a user’s local environment and AWS.
SAIC has brought together the best-in-class tools to deliver a mission-ready Zero Trust Edge capabilities that provides multi-level secure data processing and analytics and prioritizes data in a DDIL environment to transport back to the cloud, said Lauren Knausenberger, chief innovation officer at SAIC. This provides warfighters with a critical capability to extend their enterprise OCONUS, with the ability to run disconnected ops and rapidly adopt technologies and capabilities needed for mission success. This capability has the potential to be a critical enabler for Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), with the ability to deploy at forward operating bases, on air platforms and at sea.
Through the combined efforts of AWS; SAIC; Koverse, an SAIC company; Okta; CrowdStrike; Zscaler and Splunk, ready-to-install cybersecurity and Zero Trust technologies combine data and provide multi-level security from the edge through the enterprise. This capability meets the challenges of Wide Area Network (WAN) or no WAN connectivity by enabling offline compute capabilities and replicates mission-critical data after connectivity is restored. These components of software and hardware allow the capabilities to address the five pillars of the Zero Trust Maturity Model and therefore help increase cybersecurity posture at the edge.
SAIC is an industry leader in cloud and cybersecurity, addressing Zero Trust security capabilities, including the latest capabilities which have been validated and tested on an AWS Snowball Edge device.
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Cloud Security
PR Newswire | November 01, 2023
Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire cloud security start-up Dig Security, an innovative provider of Data Security Posture Management (DSPM).
Today, almost 70% of organizations already have data stored in the public cloud1. With increased interest and adoption of generative AI, sensitive data is often even more spread out across cloud services, including distributed databases, vector databases, PaaS services, and more. Organizations need help identifying sensitive data, effectively managing user access, and implementing robust security measures to protect against internal and external threats. Simultaneously, the relentless surge in the volume and impact of cloud data breaches persists2, causing significant damage to enterprises. This underscores the critical role that DSPM will play within a comprehensive cloud security strategy.
Dig's DSPM solution enables organizations to discover, classify, monitor, and protect sensitive data across all cloud data stores, which will give Palo Alto Networks' customers visibility into and control of their multi-cloud data estate. After the close of the proposed acquisition, Dig's capabilities will be seamlessly integrated into the Prisma® Cloud platform to provide near real-time data protection from code to cloud. Dig was founded by entrepreneurs Dan Benjamin, Ido Azran, and Gad Akuka. They will continue leading their teams in joining the Prisma Cloud team at Palo Alto Networks after closing.
Lee Klarich, Chief Product Officer for Palo Alto Networks:
"As companies build AI-enabled applications, there will be a substantial increase in the amount of data transferred to the cloud. Dig's highly innovative DSPM technology helps safely enable this shift, and its dedicated team will complement and help advance Palo Alto Networks' strengths across cloud security. The announcement of our intent to join forces with Dig reinforces our longstanding commitment to our team in Israel and to continue growing our footprint with its talented and dedicated cybersecurity professionals."
Ankur Shah, SVP Products, Prisma Cloud for Palo Alto Networks:
"Data protection was the top priority for cloud security cited in the 2023 The State of Cloud-Native Security Report. Upwards of 75% of respondents noted that the number of point tools they use creates blind spots. Dig lets security teams see and secure their data across multi-cloud environments. This visibility and security is becoming increasingly important in the age of generative AI. Dig's innovation, coupled with Prisma Cloud's leading code-to-cloud intelligence highlighted in the recent Darwin release, will create what CISOs need to drive complete cloud security and data protection with a single, integrated, cloud-native platform."
Dan Benjamin, Co-Founder & CEO, Dig Security:
"Modern cloud applications leverage a broad set of data stores to meet the complex needs of businesses. We developed an award-winning DSPM solution to alleviate this strain by providing a centralized offering to monitor and manage the security of these cloud data stores. Integrating Dig's technology with Prisma Cloud will enable customers to effectively manage the security of their diverse data stores in modern cloud applications and reduce the risk of data breaches. My co-founders and I look forward to continuing our innovation journey with Palo Alto Networks to make the world safer."
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